CHAPTER VI THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER
With regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite.
There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is also a philosoph

CHAPTER V PRAYER
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God,--what is the meaning of these words?
Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, permanent; necessar

CHAPTER IV THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES
Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association.
They shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right which every

CHAPTER III ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST
Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to th

CHAPTER II THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where centres of labor should exist. Monast

BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS
CHAPTER I THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA
This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.
Man is the second.
Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be o

CHAPTER XI END OF THE PETIT-PICPUS
At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in its decay; this forms a part of the general death of the order, which, after the eighteenth century, has been disappearing like all the religious orders. Contemplation is, like pra

CHAPTER X ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION
However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du Temple, in particular, which belonged, in tr

CHAPTER IX A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE
Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign to this bo

CHAPTER VIII POST CORDA LAPIDES
After having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable to point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader already has some idea of it.
The convent of the Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine filled almost the

CHAPTER VII SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS
During the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the Petit-Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemeur, whose name, in religion, was Mother Innocente. She came of the family of Marguerite de Blemeur, author of Lives of the Saints of th

CHAPTER VI THE LITTLE CONVENT
In this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly distinct buildings,--the Great Convent, inhabited by the nuns, the Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged; and lastly, what was called the Little Convent. It was a building with a garden,

CHAPTER V DISTRACTIONS
Above the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the property of bearing people straight to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:--
"Little white Paternoster, which God m

CHAPTER IV GAYETIES
None the less, these young girls filled this grave house with charming souvenirs.
At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, "Good; here come the children!

CHAPTER III AUSTERITIES
One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their or